In an blog posted today on the Phoenix New Timessite, Troy Farah asks: “Harlem Shake vs. Gallon Smashing Prank: Which Meme Will Destroy America First?” Well, both have caused a lot of problems for smashers and shakers in the United States. We read a recent report about the possible legal issues facing some gallon smashers. And CNN.com posted a story on March 1 about the FAA’s probe into a recent “shake” on a plane. With negative results such as these, it’s clear that the Smash and the Shake are bidding for the most tile of “most destructive.”

Where does the engineering community stand on these pranks? Well, we have not seen an electrical engineer, robot, or microcontroller-based system smashing a gallon of milk to get a laugh. (Thankfully! We don’t endorse it.) But we did recently seen an engineer’s take on the Harlem Shake.

Pop quiz: What was the first microcontroller to leave the Earth? Find out the answer in Jan Buiting’s new “Retronics” webinar. Check out the video below.

The Tektronix 546B

If you read Circuit Cellar and Elektor magazines, you likely have as much passion for old-school electronics as you do for he new, cutting-edge technology you find at events such as the Embedded Systems Conference. Elektor editor Jan Buiting is well-known for his love of both new and old technology, and in his Retronics webinar series he presents some of his favorite old-school technologies.

In the video below, Jan explains how and where he found some of his retronics equipment. He also details how he fixed some of the systems and what he does with them. Examples include:

Want to learn more about Embedded Linux? You’re in luck. On Wednesday, November 14, Elektor and Farnell/element14 will partner to run an informative webinar on the topic at Electronica 2012 in Munich, Germany. If you’re at the show, you can attend the recordings for free. Register before October 31 to get free Electronica entry tickets from Farnell/element14.

Attendees should go to the Farnell/element14 stand (Hall 5, Stand 558) for the Elektor Academy seminar, which will focus on the latest developments on the innovative Embedded Linux board. You can watch the presentation and ask the experts questions. The webinar will be recorded and webcast a bit later.

Domotics (home automation) control systems are among the most innovative and rewarding design projects creative electrical engineers can undertake. Let’s take a look at an innovative Beagle Board-based control system that enables a user to control lights with a 10.1˝ capacitive touchscreen.

• An I/O board for testing purposes
• An LED strip board for controlling an RGB LED strip
• A relay board for switching 230-VAC devices
• An energy meter for measuring on/off (and also for logging)

ELektor editor and engineer Clemens Valens recently interviewed Koen van Dongen about the design. Van Dongen describes the system’s electronics and then demonstrates how to use the touchscreen to control a light and LED strip.

As Valens explains suggests, it would be a worthwhile endeavor to incorporate a Wi-Fi connection to enable cellphone and tablet control. If you build such system, be sure to share it with our staff. Good luck!

Do you want to add a powerful wireless Android device to your own projects? Now you can, and doing so is easier than you think.

With their high-resolution touchscreens, ample computing power, WLAN support, and telephone functions, Android smartphones and tablets are ideal for use as control centers in your projects. But until now, it has been difficult to connect them to external circuitry. Elektor’s AndroPod interface board, which adds a serial TTL port and an RS-485 port to the picture, changes this situation.

The Elektor AndroPod module

In a free webinar on June 21, 2012, Bernhard Wörndl-Aichriedler (codesigner of the AndroPod Interface) will explain how easy it is to connect your own circuitry to an Android smartphone using the AndroPod interface. Click here to register.

Elektor Academy and element14 have teamed up to bring you a series of exclusive webinars covering blockbuster projects from recent editions of Elektor magazine. Participation in these webinars is completely free!

An engineering team from Virginia Tech’s Center of HCI and Department of Computer Science recently won first place in the IEEE’s 2012 3DUI Contest the for their Collaborative Navigation in Virtual Search and Rescue Escort (CARNAGE) project. The project was designed to enable emergency responders to collaborate and safely navigate a dangerous environment such as a disaster area.

The contest was open to researchers, students, and professionals working on 3-D user interface technologies. Entrants were challenged to design an application to enable two users—situated in different locations with his or her own UI—to navigate a 3-D environment without speaking to each other.

The Virginia Tech team—comprising Felipe Bacim, Eric Ragan, Siroberto, and Cheryl Stinson—described their design in a concise system description, which is currently available on the 3DUI 2012 contest website:

Our task specifically looks at communication between a scene commander and a disaster relief responder during a search and rescue operation. The responders inside the environment have great difficulty navigating because of hazards, reduced visibility, disorientation, and lack of survey knowledge of the environment. Observing the operation from outside of the disaster area, scene commanders work to help coordinate the response effort [1, 2]. With the responder’s notifications about the environment, scene commanders can provide new instructions, alert the responders to risks, and issue evacuation orders. Since neither the commander nor the responder has complete information about the environment, effective communication is essential.

As technology advances, the incorporation of new tools into search and rescue protocols shows promise for improving operation efficiency and safety. In this research, we explore the use of 3D user interfaces to assist collaborative search-and-rescue. Ideally, users should be able to focus on their primary tasks in the VE, rather than struggle with travel and way finding. Using virtual reality (VR) as a prototyping testbed, we implemented a proof-of-concept collaborative guidance system. Preliminary evaluation has demonstrated promising results for efficient rescue operations.

The team also created an explanatory 6:16-minute project video:

Click here for more information about the IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces in Costa Mesa, CA.

It’s time to review what our Elektor colleagues in The Netherlands, France, and beyond worked on and covered this week! As usual, they’ve been quite busy working in the Elektor lab, organizing webcasts, prepping for Design West, and assembling upcoming issues of Elektor magazine. The following is a wrap-up of some of the many things Elektor staffers covered and worked on this week.

Below is a video of a thermometer with a giant display.

The electromechanical display was recovered from a ’60s-era pinball machine.

The thermometer with a giant display

Using the display and some innovative programming techniques, it’s possible to build a water-temperature indicator a swimming pool. After the temperature appears on the 4″ reels, the circuit’s consumption decreases to zero. But the temperature display remains perfectly visible. You needn’t worry about batteries (dry or rechargeable), adjustments, or maintenance. (Published in Elektor issue 424, April 2012 www.elektor.com/110673)

Board for Elektor's thermometer with a giant display

On the event front, Elektor Academy and element14 have teamed up to bring you a series of exclusive webinars covering blockbuster projects from recent editions of Elektor magazine. Participation in these webinars is completely free! All you need to do is register via www.element14.com/community/events/3258. The “AVR Software-Defined Radio” webinar takes place Thursday, March 9, 2012. Click herefor more information.

The patch developed by the research labs Imec and Holst Centre and the Danish company Delta measures 3 ECG signals while a 3D accelerometer monitors physical activity. The captured data is processed by a microprocessor integrated in the patch and relevant information is transmitted wirelessly using the new Bluetooth Low Energy technology. Energy consumption is low enough to allow continuous operation during one week.

Have you been reading Circuit Cellar columnist Bob Japenga’s articles on embedded Linux? If so, you’ll check out Elektor’s post about Raspberry Pi:

The board is based on a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC, which includes an ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz processor, a VideoCore IV GPU and 128 or 256 MB of RAM is intended to run Linux kernel based operating systems. Selling for only 28 Euros the distributors’ websites have been overwhelmed by the demand and the first batch of 10,000 pieces was sold out in less than an hour.

The foundation plans to release two versions: Model A & Model B. Model A will have 128 MB RAM, one USB port and no Ethernet controller, while model B will contain 256 MB RAM, two USB ports and a 10/100 Ethernet controller.

Click here for the entire article. You can also read my recent post on Raspberry Pi. Check it out!

Lastly, consider attending the upcoming Elektor Academy webinar “AVR Software Defined Radio.” The webinar is scheduled for 3/29/12. Click here for more information. If you attend, be sure to let us know what you think!

In a TEDTalk Thursday, engineer Vijay Kumar presented an exciting innovation in the field of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology. He detailed how a team of UPenn engineers retrofitted compact aerial robots with embedded technologies that enable them to swarm and operate as a team to take on a variety of remarkable tasks. A swarm can complete construction projects, orchestrate a nine-instrument piece of music, and much more.

The 0.1-lb aerial robot Kumar presented on stage—built by UPenn students Alex Kushleyev and Daniel Mellinger—consumed approximately 15 W, he said. The 8-inch design—which can operate outdoors or indoors without GPS—featured onboard accelerometers, gyros, and processors.

“An on-board processor essentially looks at what motions need to be executed, and combines these motions, and figures out what commands to send to the motors 600 times a second,” Kumar said.

Watch the video for the entire talk and demonstration. Nine aerial robots play six instruments at the 14:49 minute mark.